Business planning is used by many organizations to evaluate business strategies by using existing data to forecast future events and assessing the impact of the strategies on the forecasted events. Alternatively, businesses may also chose to retrospectively assess the impact of strategies on past events using past data. Because business planning processes and strategies are customer specific depending on the industry and structure of a business, previous business planning applications were highly customized for each business customer, and often required a computer programmer to write specialized computer code based on the specific planning requirements of the business. In many instances when a business's planning needs changed, the specialized computer code would also have to be modified resulting in additional delays and expenses for the business.
While some existing business planning applications provide graphical user interfaces for typical business users with no computer programming experience to create and modify planning models, these existing applications can only create simple models that offer limited functionality. For example, the existing applications may only interface with specific data, such as data stored in a data warehouse of a business intelligence system. Organizational data that is not stored in the business intelligence system, such as customer data stored in a customer relationship management (CRM) system, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, or as part of a larger business suite, may not be added into the planning model. Additionally, these existing applications may require use of specific software, such as a Java® Server, which may not easily integrate into other systems using different software, such as ERP systems using Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP).
Therefore, there is a need for a business planning system having planning models that can be changed at the customer side by business users without computer programming skills that can interface with data in both business intelligence systems and ERP systems in ABAP.